


Out of the Past

by rivkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Eight crazy nights, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 02:06:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For avidrosette: Sam/Dean, what if lawyer!Sam took on a case for the Innocence Project and his lost-cause, languishing-in-jail client turned out to be Dean?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avidrosette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avidrosette/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [Out of the Past](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133414) by [nikolaschika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikolaschika/pseuds/nikolaschika)



> Note for those of you who care: Sam is doing pro bono for his law firm here, not the Innocence Project. Beta by giandujakiss.

Sam missed his phone, checked at security, more than he’d ever missed his knives. He’d brought a brief to review, but ignored it in favor of jiggling his knee in anticipation. His suit had never felt more ill-fitting, despite the fact that he’d had it tailored; the tie was like a ghost’s choking fingers around his neck.

The door opened, but it wasn’t Dean. It was Joe Alexander, the prosecutor. Sam nearly opened his mouth to ask if they’d changed their mind and decided to retry Dean, but he wasn’t going to give this asshole the satisfaction. If that was going to happen, he’d know soon enough.

Alexander shook his head, like he didn’t believe Sam had the gall to be waiting to congratulate his exonerated client on his unprecedented release. “I still don’t believe it. Wolf attacks? In Houston?”

Sam shrugged. “Not really your call.” Alexander wasn’t the one who’d suppressed the evidence that Dean had been elsewhere for three of the five deaths, but he was part of the office and he’d fought hard to keep Dean locked up. Sam didn’t owe him anything more than what he’d heard in court.

He also didn’t owe Dean anything, but his brother wasn’t getting out without going through Sam. Sam had done as Dean had demanded—hunted down the werewolves and killed them all on his own in the middle of researching Dean’s habeas petition, and if you asked him which was harder he wasn’t inclined to answer ‘werewolves.’ Of course he’d ignored Dean’s request to leave him alone to rot in jail, because Dean had already given up on himself.

Dean hadn’t wanted Sam’s help getting out. Too fucking bad.

The next time, when the door opened, it was Dean, eyes anywhere but directed at Sam.

He looked just the same as he had in the courtroom. Pale from too much time indoors, but not skinny; he’d been making good use of the exercise equipment. Instead of the generic suit Sam had made sure he was wearing at the hearing, he had his own clothes—jeans, jacket, workshirt, so much like he’d been dressed when Sam had left for Stanford that Sam’s heart turned over. The corrections officer accompanying him unlocked the cuffs and handed him a plastic bag that looked to contain a wallet and keys. Sam remembered how mad he’d been when he found out that Dean had called _Bobby_ to come rescue the Impala—a whole conspiracy to keep him from finding out that his brother was being falsely accused of murder.

Alexander spoke before anyone else could. “Mr. Johnson,” he said to Dean, “the city of Houston regrets your situation, and reminds you that if you’re considering affirmative legal action, there’s the small matter of the credit cards and forged ID in your possession when you were arrested.”

“Don’t worry, Officer Krupke, I’ll get out of your hair. Over the state line by tonight,” Dean said, sardonic twist in his mouth that said he was used to being unwanted.

Alexander nodded, and then Dean was pushing the other door open, the one that led out into the world. Sam jumped to his feet and followed. There was still plenty of security between them and daylight, and enough bystanders that there was very little Sam could say, but that didn’t mean he was letting Dean get away.

“You’re welcome,” he said when he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Dean walked faster, but he was stymied by the guards at the exit. One of them flashed him a real smile—another Dean charm convert, Sam guessed—and Dean managed a thin grin in response.

“Good luck, Chris,” Dean’s acolyte said, and ridiculous fury consumed Sam’s senses, so he didn’t hear whatever lie Dean responded with. Dean gave himself out to everyone, sliced himself up and handed out the pieces, but for Sam he had _nothing_ , just like always.

No, Sam reminded himself as he signed for his phone. Not always. Before Sam left, before Sam had tried to kiss him—

Sam hurried outside, grabbing Dean’s elbow as he obviously looked around for a bus or some other means of escape. “No, you don’t get to do this. Not when I just saved your _life_!”

Dean spun on him, and the fury on his face forced Sam back a step. “You didn’t save _shit_! And if you don’t get away from me soon—”

“You’ll punch me? You’ll tell me how bad a brother I am? I know what you think, Dean.”

Dean’s face was honestly confused. “What? I don’t—” He stopped and knuckled at his temple. “It’s dangerous, okay? Not regular salt-and-burn stuff.”

“If someone or something is after you, I’m not just going to walk away and _leave_ you.” What the hell did Dean think Sam had been doing for the past few months?

“Dangerous for _you_. This isn’t your fight, Sammy.”

Sam could tell that this wasn’t some bullshit story. Dean’s eyes were gleaming; he really believed that Sam might be at risk. He fixed Dean with the look he used on recalcitrant witnesses. “Tell you what. You sit down with me and explain what’s going on, and maybe I will leave you alone and let you forget all about me. _If_ you convince me.”

Dean rubbed his hand through his hair—too short to pull at, though he looked like he wanted to—and sighed. “Fine. Fine, Sammy.”

“My car’s over here,” Sam said, and didn’t give Dean the opportunity to duck the other way.

****

An hour later, Dean was on his third cup of coffee—prison coffee apparently being the worst thing about prison, or at least the worst Dean would admit to—and Sam was reeling. Angels. Demon plots. Demon _blood_ , which supposedly explained all his strange headaches and premonitions back when he’d just graduated college.

“Tell me again how you fixed it,” Sam said, and heard the echo of his father’s orders.

Dean straightened on the diner’s bench seat. “I made a deal with an angel. He keeps you out of it, I fight on the winning side, everybody goes home happy.”

Sam was bracketing the question of whether these were really angels in the angels-of-God sense, because he didn’t want to get into a theological debate. He’d consider the implications for his own faith later. “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “Why would you have to bargain with an angel, and what does that have to do with you ending up on death row for a murder you didn’t commit?”

Dean shrugged. He was looking down at his coffee cup, lashes obscuring his eyes. His premature crows’ feet had been a surprise when Sam first saw him in the prison, but they only made him more infuriatingly attractive. “Angels aren’t like demons. They need consent.”

Sam processed that for a second, thinking back to his long-ago researches into the supernatural, back when he was trying to help on hunts just to keep Dad and Dean from getting killed. Consent to—“You’re giving your body to an angel?” He barely restrained himself from yelling, but still got some curious glances from nearby tables.

“’s our bloodline, he says,” Dean said, almost whispering. “With you out and me in, he says the battle’s gonna be a walk instead of an apocalypse.”

“And you believe all this,” Sam said. As he recalled, Dean didn’t hold much faith in any higher power. He couldn’t imagine a desire for glory had changed Dean’s mind.

Dean was toying with a couple of sugar packets now, worrying the edges. “He’s no demon. Passed all the tests me ‘n Bobby could think up. And some of the other stuff he says checks out, too. Like this kid who’s breaking all the seals keeping Lucifer locked up. He can’t go after Lucy until the cage is unlocked; he says it’s gonna happen in about a month now. So it didn’t matter that I was inside. There’s no jail humans can build to keep an angel out.”

There was still something Dean wasn’t saying. Throughout the habeas process, he hadn’t seemed like a man confident that he was going to be rescued by other means. To the contrary, if anything. Victims of demon possession recovered, usually, if the demon hadn’t worn them out in the meantime. “And when the apocalypse doesn’t go off, what happens to you?”

Dean’s face flashed an unfamiliar expression—fear, Sam thought numbly—before Dean locked himself down again. “Did you not hear me when I told you that Dad made a deal with a demon to save me? He went to Hell for me! That’s _my_ fault, Sam. M—I got him into Heaven, and you’re safe. Nothing else matters.”

Sam gaped at him. If Dad had ever actually talked to them instead of issuing orders, that was the kind of suicide mission bullshit that would have come out of _his_ mouth. From Dean, it was a confirmation of all Sam’s worst fears; even without his other reasons, he still might have left for college just so he wouldn’t have to see Dean climb up on some sacrificial altar like this. Proving Dean falsely accused was supposed to have _stopped_ Dean’s heedless drive to throw himself away.

Dean stood. “Pay the check, will you, Sammy? I didn’t have much cash on me when they picked me up.” But he waited by the door while Sam struggled to find the bills, so at least Sam wasn’t going to have to chase him through the streets.

“I’m not going to let you destroy yourself, Dean,” Sam said when he caught up. “There’s got to be an alternative.”

Dean shook his head, and used the excuse of arriving at the car to ignore Sam further. They got in and Sam started driving them back to his sterile little apartment, where Dean was going to stay if Sam had to chain him there. Dean rolled down the window and put his arm on the door, looking out like the world’s surliest golden retriever. Sam ran through his list of old contacts in his head. Bobby would already have done his best, but there were others, including people who knew darker magic than John Winchester ever held truck with.

Sam remembered Dean’s call, from a burner phone that all of Sam’s skills couldn’t trace. Dad’s dead, he’d said and hung up. For months afterwards, every time the phone rang Sam hoped—but Dean didn’t call again. He must have thought Sam still deserved that much, not kicked out of the family entirely, for his father’s sake despite what Dean himself thought. Dean wouldn’t ever have told Dad about Sam’s aborted pass the night he’d left for Stanford.

He’d already lost Dad without a reconciliation. If Dean thought that Sam was going to stand by and watch Dean submit to possession—angel or demon, it didn’t matter—he was as deluded as those witches they’d rousted in Brookline when Sam was seventeen, or the plaintiffs’ counsel in the last lawsuit he’d litigated before the partner had slid the folder with Dean’s picture in it across his desk.

When they parked in the dinky lot behind his building, Dean sat back in his seat instead of immediately getting out. “I can get to Bobby’s on my own,” he said to the dashboard. 

“That’s still not working for me,” Sam informed him. 

Dean sucked in a breath. “Angels … mine says there are ‘factions.’” His face screwed up in a dismissive scowl. The volume of his voice dropped, as if he was hoping Sam wasn’t going to hear this next part. “Whatever he needs, it’s in your blood too. Longer you hang around me, longer you look like you’re still in the game. And they ain’t shy about how they get your ‘yes.’ I got a good deal for you. Don’t fuck it up now.”

Sam chewed on that for a good minute. “Dean,” he said at last. “You could spit in my face right now, tell me I make you sick, beat me up and take my car, and I would _still_ do whatever it took to save you. If angels want to blackmail me with you, they can do that anytime and anywhere. If you can’t stand to be with me, say so, because as excuses go this one’s pretty shitty.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to be shocked silent. “Sam,” he said, sounding like he had that time the dire wolf’s teeth had gone three inches into the meat of his shoulder. “Sammy. No. That’s not what I—” He stopped entirely, cleared his throat, tried again. “It’s the same for me.” He wouldn’t meet Sam’s eyes, but Dean’s embarrassment was proof enough of his sincerity. It sent a funny spike of pain into his heart, knowing that Dean really might try to forgive him anything. “Except if you touch my car I will end you,” Dean warned, and Sam laughed probably more than was warranted.

Dean’s tiny grin made Sam even giddier, until Dean scowled. “Come on,” he said. “We’re wasting daylight.”

****

Dean nearly refused to enter Sam’s apartment while Sam packed, insisting that he wanted to hurry back to the Impala—a dying man’s last wish, he said, and Sam nearly did punch him then. They got on the road to South Dakota after the minimum of snark about Sam’s cushy lawyer gig. (Dean’s only jobs had been the kind where employers kind of expected people to take off suddenly. Sam didn’t explain as much to Dean, but he didn’t anticipate that the law firm would let him come back from his unscheduled absence, even with a stunning upset like Dean’s case under his belt—after all, that was just pro bono. Like one of the partners said, pro bono was the P.E. of law firm work: nobody really cared how well you did, as long as you showed up.)

Life on the road was familiar, despite the years Sam had spent hiding from it. Almost scary how easily he slipped back into traveling mode. The only difference was that he had nicer clothes to put into his duffel now, and fewer weapons. Dean grunted approval when he saw Sam bring out the Taurus, just in case.

Sam tried not to stare at Dean too openly. Being in the driver’s seat felt unnatural, even though they weren’t in the Impala, but at least it forced him to keep his eyes mostly on the road. Dean’s presence was all-pervasive anyway; maybe it was Sam’s imagination, but he _smelled_ the same, leather and the faint hint of oil-blood-mud that had made Sam’s heart race since he’d known what there was to worry about. Dean shifted in his seat and grimaced and picked at the fraying knee of his jeans, and Sam felt the years unwinding like every mile was a backwards tick of the clock.

Driving through the darkness, only the headlights shining off the reflectors and the white lines of the roadway, it was like they were the only people in the world. Sometimes Sam had fantasized about that: him and Dean, road warriors, eking out some kind of existence on the husk of a dead nation. It hadn’t seemed so different from their real lives, only with less stealing from living people and less Dean wandering off to get laid, and Sam would’ve welcomed both.

Finally, Sam demanded they break for the night. They splurged on delivery—pizza, on Sam’s well-evidenced theory that it was less likely to be awful than the local Chinese. Dean had probably never had real Szechuan regional cooking, and probably never would, Sam thought. And if Sam tried to tell him what he was missing, he’d just feel judged. Anyhow, the pizza was edible, which was all that they really required right now.

Dean ate with every appearance of focused and complete enjoyment, which also let him avoid conversation. Sam suspected that he wasn’t doing a great job of concealing his own scrutiny. In the prison interview rooms and the courtroom, Dean had been playing a role—hardened, careless con—and then when Sam had gone out to collect the evidence, he’d found three stories of his brother’s heroism, unknown and impossible to tell to the court. While the werewolves had been killing, Dean had been saving lives, once at the cost of a new set of scars. It had been like finding out Dean’s best qualities all over again, right down to the resentment at the secrecy the world’s resistance to the supernatural imposed on them. Even as he’d proved Dean’s innocence, he’d been unable to explain to the sneering prosecutors and the overworked clerks that they’d made a mistake about the best of men, instead of a feckless and naturally suspicious drifter.

“You gonna eat that?” Dean asked. 

Sam smiled at his own romanticism. “Yeah,” he said, curling his hand protectively around his slice, even though all he did after that was pick at it until it was too congealed to bother with.

They’d be at Bobby’s tomorrow. Once Dean had his car back, there was every chance he’d ditch Sam again. If Sam wanted to talk about anything sensitive, the time was now.

“We’re going to figure out how to get you out of this,” he said, just so his position was clear.

“Sam—” Dean’s tone was indulgent and upset at the same time.

“No, let me finish,” Sam snapped. Dean was all rigid muscles on the other bed. He wasn’t going to get more comfortable when he heard what Sam had to say, but it still needed saying. “I just need you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry I—tried to, you know. The night I left.” He’d wanted to give Dean a damn good reason to leave him alone (he’d hoped that Dean would pack up and come to California with him, a new life with no one who knew) and he hadn’t waited around after Dean pushed him away (he’d known all along that he was as alone in that desire as he was in the rest of what he wanted from life). “You don’t have to—I’m going to figure this out, and after I save you, you never have to see me again if it still disgusts you.”

When he dared a glance over at Dean, he saw that Dean was all but trembling, his whole body in flight mode. He sat on the edge of the bed, facing Sam, his shoulders tensed; if Sam touched him, he was going to get punched.

Finally, Dean took a deep breath, bracing himself. “Do you still, uh, want that?” His voice was so low Sam swayed forward, but he couldn’t get any clues from Dean’s tone. Dean wasn’t about to beat him up, but that was all Sam was willing to conclude.

Sam could have told him that no, years apart had dimmed the flame, showed him the error of his ways, made him a whole man. But Dean was the one who got away; even ordinary, non-screwed-up people had that kind of weakness. He shrugged. “Always.”

He could hear the faint scrape of polyester threads as Dean shifted on the cheap motel comforter. “I thought, you’d find somebody.”

“I did,” he admitted. “It didn’t work out.” I kept having visions of her dying, he didn’t say. They made a nice contrast to the nightmares where you and Dad were slaughtered by something you hunted, he didn’t say.

“I never meant to do that to you. I fucked it up. You were just a kid, and I.”

Sam sat up, because Dean sounded _wrecked_. He sounded like Dad at the bottom of his worst benders, when he’d mumbled stuff that Sam hadn’t understood at the time but had always made Dean blanch and shove Sam into his room until the drunk wore off. Dad would frown apologetically over his coffee in the morning and Dean would tiptoe around like Dad had a pin-pulled grenade in his hand for the next few days. “Dean, you pretty clearly _didn’t_ do anything to me. Believe me, I would have remembered.”

“I made you want it,” he said miserably. Dean Winchester, bowing under the burden of so much hotness, Sam thought, but that was mean and really not that relevant, even if true.

“I took classes trying to figure out what was wrong with me,” Sam told him. “Minored in psych, in the end. I could talk all day about our airtight family system, but it doesn’t matter. It happened, it’s part of me, and I can’t get rid of it. I’ve accepted that.”

Years ago, Dean had said no. He’d said, you’re confused, when Sam had never been more certain in his life (certain too of failure, but he’d had to try). He’d said, calm down, which had been laughable; Sam had laughed. And if there had been an edge of hysteria in it, Sam had been entitled: Dad had thrown him out of the family and immediately thereafter Dean had discovered how seriously disturbed his little brother was. He’d said, you don’t have to go, and that had been the biggest lie of all.

Now Dean said nothing. Throughout the hearings on his case, his shadowed eyes on Sam had been an almost unbearable distraction, watching Sam with what Sam had fantasized was a kind of proprietary pride: however twisted he’d started out, Sam had managed to become the kind of man who could save people from death row. Sam had hoped that Dean understood that Dean had been the one to teach him not to shy away from the hard and thankless work of saving people. Sometimes in the courtroom, just before the guards took him away for the night, Sam had even thought that Dean wanted to speak but couldn’t find the words to begin. In this moment, Dean had that same look. 

“Yes?” Sam prompted. Years of waiting had left him reckless, ready to hear it all. Dean couldn’t say worse than what Sam had said to himself. “You have some comment to add?”

Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I’m going to die, Sam.”

“I told you, I’m not going to let that happen!” Sam bit out. Then the part of his brain that monitored every flicker of Dean’s eyelashes for hidden signals notified the rest of him: this was not the sort of objection that an ordinary brother with brotherly feelings would offer. 

Dean didn’t bother to reject Sam’s promise of rescue. His lips were parted, brows raised: his ‘Sam is a genius but still not very smart’ expression, kind of dopey really but also enough to send a warm glow throughout Sam’s body.

“Dean?” Sam asked. He forced the next words out, conscious that Dean might run again no matter what he wanted. “What would you do if I kissed you now?”

Dean flushed, turning his face away. “Don’t—” But Sam was already going to his knees, right between Dean’s legs. The bed was low enough and Sam grown enough that there was barely a gap in their heights. Sam would only have to pull Dean’s head down a few inches to reach him.

He put his hands on Dean’s knees, but dared no further. Dean was warm through the fabric. He could hear Dean breathing fast and uneven above him.

“You grew up so amazing,” Dean said, a distant sort of wonder in his voice. “You beat those assholes up one side the courtroom and down the other, man—you got the life you wanted, you went out and took it, and I. I don’t want to get in your way.”

Sam willed Dean to hear him this time. “You can’t choose what I want. Only whether I can have it.”

Dean looked somewhere between devastated and grateful, eyes shining and so young. “Spent so long doing what I had to, Sam.” He bit his lip, waiting for Sam’s objection about how they didn’t have to be hunters, but _that_ teenage resentment had burned out, and Sam had bigger game in mind. Dean swayed towards him, just a fraction of an inch. “I should straight-up put a gun to my head before I—but I just want something that’s mine.”

Sam knew his cue. He took Dean’s hand and put it on his face, warm fingers cupping his cheek. And then Dean pulled him up, grabbed him and tugged him into the kiss, mouth opening immediately and asserting a claim as if there had ever been any chance of denial.

He should be shocked, amazed, overwhelmed. If he had any brain cells working, he’d probably be all of those things, but it was as if everything had dissolved: all the expectations of condemnation, all the bitter self-justifications he’d rehearsed into meaninglessness. Erased like bones going to ash. Dean’s body was hot everywhere they touched, his rough and slightly chapped lips exactly as yielding as Sam had imagined. Sam’s fingers curled around the the smooth hot skin of Dean’s forearms, veins and tendons like a contour map of the only world Sam ever wanted to know. Sam’s own skin felt feverish, so sensitive that the scrape of the tag on the back of his T-shirt was almost unbearable. _Fireworks_ , he thought, and shivered.

They crashed down onto the bed, which settled unevenly in protest but didn’t collapse, and Sam put it out of his mind. Dean was frantic underneath him, squirming and clenching his fingers on Sam’s upper arms. Never in Sam’s fantasies had Dean wanted it this badly, incoherent with desire, eyes closed and panting as he pulsed his hips up and groaned into Sam’s mouth.

There was a desperation in Dean, the same unhealthy determination to sacrifice himself he’d already showed, but here Sam at least could do something about it. Using his weight and his leverage, he slowed Dean’s movements, pinning his shoulders as Sam slowed their kisses, pulling back so that Dean had to chase his mouth. “Shhh,” he said. “We’ve got all night.” He knew better than to scare Dean with longer-term talk. Anyway, now that he’d had experience with normal people over the course of years instead of weeks, he knew that the first time for any morally dubious endeavor was always the hardest-fought. Dean might freak out afterwards, but there’d be less convincing each time.

They kissed for a while because Sam couldn’t make himself stop. When he paused to get rid of his shirts Dean’s wide-eyed admiration was pure gratification. Sam’s fingers went to the hem of Dean’s own shirt and Dean turned his head into the bed and closed his eyes, his flush darkening.

After some wriggling, they were both naked, Dean still spread out under Sam: his for the taking. Sam elected to skip straight to dessert, ducking his head to lick a broad stripe up Dean’s already-hard cock. Dean cursed and jolted, but Sam got a good grip on his hips and did it again, then nosed at the crease of his thigh. Dean made an impatient noise and Sam avoided laughing at him by virtue of moving back up to tongue at the head of his dick, the taste of him rich and bitter.

When Sam’s spit-damp finger teased back behind his balls, Dean’s hips pulsed, and Sam pulled off, stricken by sudden fear. Dean opened his eyes and looked down his body, and they still knew each other well enough that Dean sighed theatrically and thunked his head against the pillow. He had his eyes closed while he spoke, like some remnant of shyness, but Sam thought that was adorable. “No, I don’t have some horrible prison gangbang story. Just warn a guy next time. Now get back to the cocksucking.” 

Sam smiled and ducked his head to comply. And by the time he did ease himself inside—because if Dean was right about the angel possession, Sam wasn’t going to waste a single chance to make Dean his in every way he could imagine—Dean was far beyond snark, eyes closed and head thrown back as he arched into Sam’s touch, hands fisted in the sheets, legs so tight around Sam’s waist that Sam thought there might be bruises.

“You have to be ready for when I’m gone,” Dean said, afterwards, into the curve of his own arm. Sam’s hand was draped loosely over the warm bony line of his hip, and Sam didn’t need to be seeing his face to know that Dean had gone serious, well before Sam was recovered enough to fuck it out of him again. Then, slowly, and Sam could tell that Dean felt like he was writing the words in his own blood: “I wasn’t. When you left. And it fucked me up. So you have to do better.”

Sam didn’t know whether Dean meant that he wouldn’t have said yes to this ridiculous angel deal if Sam had stayed—Dean was capable of that sort of guilt trip, or he might have said it without thinking. It didn’t matter, because Sam’s unspoken answer was always going to be the same: _No, I don’t_.

Sam moved his hand up, tipping Dean’s chin to the side so that they could kiss, Dean’s body yielding far more readily than his stubborn death wish. Sam realized again, with a thrill, that he was bigger than Dean now. It was his turn to look after Dean. He’d gotten Dean out of prison, and in Texas that was pretty much like getting out of a deal with God.

Whoever this fucking angel was, he didn’t stand a chance.


End file.
